1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to visual art and, more particularly, to a method for producing an appearance of continuous movement using a finite number of pictures, i.e., as few as two pictures.
2. Art Related to the Invention
Movies are generally made from a series of single, non-repetitive pictures which are viewed at a speed that provides the viewer with the appearance of continuous movement. These series of single pictures are positioned in adjacent picture frames, in sequential order, wherein adjacent pictures are substantially similar to each other and vary only slightly from each other. Usually, movies are created using movie cameras, which capture the actual movement of the object; with animated movies, a series of individual pictures or cells are created, usually by hand or computer, and assembled in sequential order where adjacent pictures of a scene are substantially similar to each other and vary only slightly. Standard film projection is 24 frames per second, American video standard NTSC is 30 f.p.s.
The appearance of continuous movement, using only two substantially similar pictures, has been accomplished in live performance by simultaneous projection of both images onto a screen, wherein one picture may be slightly off-set from the other picture as they appear on the screen, and by rotating a two-bladed propeller, wherein the propeller blades are set off from one another by 180 degrees, in front of and between the two projectors such that the two images are made to both alternate and overlap in their appearances, with both images in turn alternating with an interval of complete darkness onscreen when both projections are blocked by the spinning propeller. A viewer, using no special spectacles or visual aids, perceives a scene of limited action (with a degree of illusionary depth) that can be sustained indefinitely in any chosen direction: an evolving yet limited action appears to be happening continually without visible return-and-start-over repetition. Thus the viewer sees a visual illusion of an event impossible in actual life. Similarly, the manner in which things appear in depth are likely to be at odds, often extremely so, with the spatial character of the original photographed scene. Further, the character of movement and of depth has been made malleable in the hands of the projectionist during performance (so much so that such film-performance has been likened to a form of puppetry); the physical shifting of one of the two projections changes the visual relationship between them and thereby the character of the screen event produced. Similarly, small changes during performance in speed, placement and direction of propeller spin will cause radical changes in the visual event produced onscreen.
Other visual arts which relate to the present invention are the Pulfrich filter. For one program, titled “Bitemporal Vision: The Sea”, viewers were invited to place a Pulfrich light-reducing filter before one eye to both enhance and transform the already apparent depth character of the presentation.
The Pulfrich effect is brought about by reducing the light intensity of the image to either right or left eye (to match direction of on-screen foreground objects), usually by use of a dark filter before an eye (further explanation below). In the Pulfrich effect, electronic signaling in connection with a series of visual events are used to determine when and for how long and for which eye the darkening of the image is to take place. Signaling may be by direct wire connection to the electronic data of the picture being viewed, or by remote light or sound signaled from the picture data source or by any other method of synchronization. Spectacles for the viewer with liquid crystal display lenses which can be individually triggered to clear or partly occlude, blocking off a portion of light from reaching either eye, is one method of achieving the on/off darkening effect required by the Pulfrich effect. Another method is to shift the axis of Polaroid filters, one above the other, in relation to each other. Another way is to employ rows of micro-louvers on electronic signal, to swing between two positions: open, in line with the line of sight, or closed, edge to edge, partially blocking the line of sight.
In the Pulfrich filter effect, interference by the light-reducing filter has the effect of retarding the light that does pass through it to the eye. As long as forms and objects are changing position relative to each other as pictured frame to frame, a delayed picture seen in combination with a present-moment picture offers two slightly different pictures simultaneously to the mind. Thus an artificial three-dimensional image can be produced by the mind utilizing the same mechanisms that allow it, in viewing actuality, to produce a three-dimensional mental image from the pair of two-dimensional perspective-images received from horizontally adjacent eyes. The artificial 3-D image, depending as it does on a variable report of actuality. A Pulfrich filter used to view actual three-dimensional space will distort that space (assuming the scene is in motion). Similarly, depth in a screen-image can be distorted, and in manifold ways, including reversal of near and far and direction of motion flow. Such distortions can have expressive artistic value.
Limited to presentation in live performance, such unique visual phenomena as described has been transient theater. Attempts to capture the phenomena by way of video-camera recording of the screen-image have been disappointingly compromised, so that in over 25 years of such presentation (of so-called “Nervous System Film Performances”) no attempt has been made to commercialize such recordings.
The Pulfrich Effect to determine (in timed accordance with pictured directional motion on-screen) when and for how long darkening of the screen image takes place and for which eye, right or left, would have applications beyond use with Eternalized movies. Video games and other video movies featuring extended screen movements to left or right could, in many instances, be enhanced for viewers by Pulfrich projection into three-dimensional depth. For many such screen events—for instance, a scene filmed or videotaped from a moving vehicle, especially perpendicularly, with the camera aimed at or close to a 90 degree angle from the side of the vehicle convincingly realistic deep space would result. A stipulation of realistic deep space, as made available by the Pulfrich Effect, is that the partial light-absorbing filter be before the eye on the side to which the pictured foreground objects are seen to move. If filming or videotaping was to be done with the camera aimed perpendicular to a vehicle's path of movement, and the camera was on the driver's side, motion onscreen would flow screen-left, and the Pulfrich filtering would therefore have to take place before the left eye; thus the need to switch dark-filter placement from eye to eye in accordance with direction of screen movement. The filter works best when there is essentially horizontal movement; when viewing an unmoving or inappropriate image, both left and right eye filters should clear. Presented as electronic media, such images would benefit from timed application of appropriate Pulfrich filtering. This aspect of the invention would allow 3-dimensional movies to be created and presented (less spectacles) with the same cinema technology used for making and presenting ordinary 2-dimensional movies.